2001 Lifetime Achievement Award

2001 Lifetime Achievement Award

Presented to Dr. Jay Katz

On December 3, 2001, at the 2001 Annual IRB Conference, PRIM&R awarded its first Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Research Ethics to Dr. Jay Katz, author of "Experimentation with Human Beings". To further honor Dr. Katz, PRIM&R presented him with a bound collection of his writings. This 750-page book, entitled, "Collected Writings of Jay Katz," includes 705 pages of 48 journal articles, book chapters, and academic works. These works spanned a broad range of medical and research ethics topics and were written over a 39-year period.

Dr. Robert Levine, in presenting the award to Dr. Katz, stated that the great contributors to the field of ethics are those who "have mastered the large body of information; have applied sound analytical methods to the resolution of particular problems and sound critical methods to the resolutions proposed by themselves or others; have synthesized their findings and those of others into new comprehensive accounts of the field; and have effectively communicated the fruits of their efforts to others." He concluded that Jay Katz’s "work in research ethics exemplifies all of the features of a great contributor to the field."

Joan Rachlin, Executive Director of PRIM&R, noted that "Jay Katz is not only the founder and father of the research ethics field, but has been its moral compass since the publication of his groundbreaking book in 1972."